ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the idea of a social system organized to manage anxieties it has itself created. It discusses the complex situation in the inner world expressed in the interrelated fantasies as the “moral defense.” The connection between damage and virtue is well expressed in two closely related ideas: the idea that suffering breeds character and the idea of the innocence of victims. The system of justice can also help individuals cope with an unconscious identification with the damaged good object by redefining damage as strength and thereby dismissing any knowledge of the impairment resulting from damaging early relationships. A social system rooted in the moral defense is characterized by its emphasis on matters of justice understood in a moral language. The idea of the moral defense offers a way of conceiving the problem with which S. Freud is concerned, a problem that avoids the difficulties caused by the equation of freedom with instinct-driven behavior.
